On Tuesday, November 14, the Mount Carmel Scholastic Bowl drove down to take on other Catholic schools at St. Laurence in Burbank, Illinois. The Mount Carmel varsity team played three games, winning two and defeating St. Francis and St. Laurence.

The first round was against St. Francis, with Mount Carmel defeating St. Francis 310 to 150. Next up, the MC team faced off against Providence Catholic. At the half, MC trailed 190 to 130. After an intense half, MC fell short by one question, losing 300-290. The final round round was against St. Laurence. Though the game was close the entire round, MC pulled through in the end, winning 180 to 150.

Overall, both the coaches and the players were satisfied with the way the team played. Senior Luke Ehrenstrom was especially satisfied with the team’s performance, saying, “Our performance at St. Laurence was far and away better than I had expected that we would do. For the first time in my experience as a member of the team, we were close to a clean sweep, losing only by a single question to Providence and winning our two other games.” Ehrenstrom also noted, when asked about the players themselves, “We have significant diversity among our team in the sorts of questions we are able to answer, and it is looking like we will be a heavy-hitter on the Catholic League side of the sport.” Ehrenstrom believes that it was this diversity that enabled the team to answer 78 different questions correctly.

Head varsity coach Tom Eisenbraun agrees with Ehrenstrom, stating that the team “has a lot of talent, on both the varsity as well as the freshman-sophomore team.” Eisenbraun also picked up on the diverse knowledge of the team, stating how the team has “a lot of students particularly knowledgeable about specific content; some may be in history, some may be in math. It makes for a nice well rounded team.” Eisenbraun was also very pleased with how the team performed against the opposing teams. Eisenbraun also claimed that the one question loss to Providence is nothing to be ashamed of, due to Providence “usually being one of those teams that is there at the end competing for the championship.”

Eisenbraun is very optimistic about the future performance of the Scholastic Bowl team, with the next matches taking place at St. Rita on the fifth of December.